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The Ethics of Evil

Greig Russell

September 9, 2024



Preface

A thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree
of Master of Arts in Philosophy, at Massey University, Palmerston North,

New Zealand 2024 1

1Copyright is owned by the Author of the thesis. Permission is given for a copy to be
downloaded by an individual for the purpose of research and private study only. The
thesis may not be reproduced elsewhere without the permission of the Author.

ii



Abstract

The Ethics of Evil is an old and controversial topic either because of its
inherent nature as the study of deliberate harm of others or because many
dispute its existence as a philosophical concept. The modern revivalist
movement of Evil as a concept focuses principally on the secular and inter-
personal, ignoring all other evils like natural evils or theological challenges
from the existence of Evil, like ” The Problem of Evil” in Christianity. Yet
in many respects the dilemma of defining Evil remains. The lay or folk
perception is that Evil exists and that you will know it intuitatively when
you meet it, but serial killers only exist because this is not true. Yet few
Philosophers have actually met Evil and a robust philosophical account of
secular Evil remains elusive, leading many philosophers to claim Evil does
not exist.

Outlined in this thesis is a conjunctive thick and reductive hybrid moral
account of secular Evil, that attempts to resolve this dilemma.

The key elements in the Social-Harm model for a deed to be an Evil-deed
by this account are:

1. The act will cause permanent, life-changing harm to the victim. 2. the
perpetrator is a culpable agent. 3. the act must instill terror or moral out-
rage in the society where it takes place. This act must be so profound that
it disrupts the coherence of society or public safety, thereby underscoring
the societal impact of Evil.

As a thick account, the Social-Harm account needs to describes both why the
deed is Evil and why it is immoral. The Social-Harm account, as normative
ethical account, reduces Evil to a natural act that encompasses all three
elements. The argument offered is that for an act to be deemed Evil, all
three elements must be present. The first two describe why it is an act that
has the disposition to be called Evil. The societal reaction to the act is the
distinguishing normative element of the Social-Harm account, where an act
can be deliberate, even if careless, and cause permanent harm, such as in

iii



a motor vehicle accident without it being Evil on the basis of the societal
response.

This account of secular Evil is compared to other earlier, often essentialist
accounts of Evil. So, Evil must represent some form of occult brain damage
or having a deformity of their personality or nature. Not all essentialist
accounts of Evil necessarily support Evil as a concept. Cole’s account de-
scribes Evil as only monstrous Evil and states that such can not exist by
reason.

The critical defence of the Social-Harm account is against Moore’s natural-
istic fallacy. This classic meta-ethical theory argues that no moral property
can be reduced to a natural object. A natural object may be an example
of that property, but there is more to the property than just the object.
Several counters to Moore’s position, including Frege’s ”Begging the Ques-
tion” argument and Langford’s ”Paradox of Analysis, before concluding that
Moore’s counterargument has not stood the test of time.

The real challenge to the Social Harm account is that particular counter-
examples can be proposed, like Luke Russell’s ”Hunting the homeless for
sport.” This and similar examples appear to describe acts that are appar-
ently Evil, yet under the Social Harm account, they are not because they
do not illicite a negative societal reaction. Further clauses would need to
be added to the Social-Harm Account to address these particular examples.
Adding subsequent clauses to a hybrid account triggers an infinite spiral,
whereby addressing any specific particular case makes a hybrid account less
generalisable.

At the end of the day, the echo of Moore’s naturalistic fallacy remains
correct. There is more to Evil than cruelty and terrifying permanent harm,
even if acts that are cruel and cause terrifying permanent harm are Evil.

Meaning the dilemma of defining Evil remains unresolved by this
approach.

iv



Acknowledgement

I acknowledge the many thoughts and opinions kindly and unkindly offered
over many years of working on the frontlines of the emergency services es-
pecially the many friends and colleagues from the NZ Police, in the judicial
system, and across various custodial facilities from the Youth Justice Fa-
cilities to Adult Medium Security Facilities. I would also acknowledge the
staff, patients, and their families in the various forensic psychiatric facilities
I have worked in. I also need to recognise the victims of crime and their
families who have suffered often beyond words but also not to be forgot-
ten are the perpetrators of crime, who are often victims of earlier crimes
themselves. Their collective wisdom was the backbone of this thesis.

Lastly, I would like to thank my supervisor, Dr. Gerald Harrison, for all his
support and advice throughout the journey of this thesis.

v



Table of contents

1 Introduction 1

2 The Evil within that lurks in plain sight. 9

3 The Social-Harm account 17
3.1 Describing Evil is to know Evil . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

4 Normative ethics 37

5 Defending the Social-Harm account of Evil: 52
5.1 Naturalism and the intuitionist reply . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
5.2 Moore’s counter - the naturalistic fallacy . . . . . . . . . . . 56

6 Scepticism about Evil 73
6.1 From the ontology of Evil . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73

7 Social accounts of Evil 88

8 Action-based accounts of Evil 105

9 Agent-centred accounts of Evil 113
9.1 Dispositional-based accounts of Evil . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
9.2 Accounts of an Evil character based upon privation . . . . . 122
9.3 Affective accounts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
9.4 Hybrid accounts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
9.5 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127

10 Some objections to the Social-Harm account 129

vi



Table of contents

11 Summary 135

References 140

vii



List of Figures

1.1 Ngram of usage of the words Evil, bad, wrong and virtueus
1500-2019 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

viii



1 Introduction

Evil is a deliciously ancient emotive term whose meaning and usage have

varied across time and cultures, yet yet many philosophers as will be dis-

cussed in this thesis argue for a universal singular concept of Evil. This

inconsistency alone would justify the philosophical study of the word and

its meaning, for how can any inconsistent account describe a universal moral

object? The English word derives from a fusion of the equivalent Germanic,

Dutch and old English words, yet the concept is far older.

Evil is also a broad topic, and its philosophical perspective is unfamiliar to

many. However, it is one of the few topics in academic philosophy that the

wider public is interested in and holds an opinion about. Unusually for any

student in the humanities, there is never a risk of being challenged about

the relevance of one’s work, even less so with the horrors of war breaking

out again.

Philosophically, any account of Evil is the study of what Evil is, why it is

Evil, what Evil has in common with other moral objects and what is unique

1



1 Introduction

about Evil so it is not just simply wrong. Nevertheless, despite humanity’s

endless ability to cause itself terrible pain and suffering, several principal

usages or types of Evil have emerged.

1. Folk Evils. This usage started with fireside stories and evolved into

literary tropes that, in turn, became incorporated into modern board

and digital games. Each story element is progressively developed but

each underlying trope has an underlying real-world basis, adding that

nugget of truth, which adds credibility to the tale. Examples of these

are the Vampires, with the echo of sexual abuse victims who go onto

sexually abuse themselves or the change of personality and mentation

with late-stage syphilis echoed in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr Jekyl

and Mr Hyde.

2. Theological Evils, where the ruling deity for a given culture often

has the property of being infinitely Good, and any opposing entity

or belief possesses the mirror property of being utterly Evil. Such a

binary distinction justifies great cruelty to the followers of the Evil

entity by the followers of the infinitely Good God.

3. Natural Evil describes the Evil chance or Evil fortune that results from

various natural evils, such as natural disasters or plagues, afflicting

humanity. Emergency services often describe this as the “wrong place,

wrong time” syndrome.

2



1 Introduction

4. Societal Evil. This conception captures Evil between groups within

a society or between different societies. It is when humanity decides

that members of an external or different culture or society are all

bad and an Evil danger that this justifies their destruction without

remorse or displays of compassion. The principle distinction is that

the Evil agent who instigates the Evil and those who perform the

actual deed are usually two different beings within a socially defined

power structure.

5. Interpersonal Evil. This usage covers acts where one member of a

society deliberately causes permanent harm to another in a way that

causes terror and undermines the society’s social structure. This ac-

count of Evil will be the predominant focus of this thesis.

These different usages and the nuance embedded under each high-level de-

scriptor further challenge the view that Evil is a unified construct, causing

philosophers to be sceptical about Evil as a unified or coherent concept

(Cole 2019) and one that differs from mere superstitions. Nevertheless,

agencies that deal with deliberately harmful, cruel or perverse acts such as

Police and Prison officers are clear that Evil not only exists, because they

have encountered it. So, is Evil a muddled, confused concept that is an

anachronism best relegated to fiction? Or is Evil authentic and uncommon,

but not necessarily rare, although probably unevenly distributed across so-

3



1 Introduction

ciety? After all, very few Police or Prison officers have met a Philosopher,

and Philosophers exist, if only within academic departments of the nearest

university.

However, the scope for scepticism that Evil exists as a coherent philosophi-

cal construct is daunting. Christian theology unconvincingly struggles with

the problem of Evil, where an all-knowing, all-powerful, all-present God

should be able to stop Evil from occurring to his chosen people, particu-

larly by his agents. Nevertheless, that such a God does not or can not

prevent Evil is, at least for Mackie, fatal to the concept of a monotheistic

Christian God (J. L. Mackie 1955). Mackie holds that God can not simul-

taneously be all-knowing and all-powerful yet also allow Evil, as the occur-

rence of Evil implies God is either not all-knowing or all-powerful. Societal

Evil, especially when it causes interpersonal suffering, is often also seen as

not the cause but as a symptom of the actual issue. Theories, like social

disorganisation theory, say that offending is explicable by political, social,

and genetic factors complicated by alcohol and other drug abuse (Kubrin

2009). Empirical science has undermined Evil as the cause of natural geolog-

ical catastrophes. Earthquakes are not manifestations of supernatural Evil

processes. Instead, they manifest underlying physical phenomena and are

symptoms of the movement of vast tectonic plates that float on the mantle.

Societal Evil, especially when it causes interpersonal suffering, is often also

4



1 Introduction

seen as a symptom of social disorganisation theory(Kubrin 2009).

Folk evil struggles as modern medicine explains illnesses and human be-

haviour previously labelled as manifestations of Evil. Illness is not about

transformation into an Evil creature. The vampire becomes the sexually

abused child who themselves becomes a subsequent child molester; Dr Jekyll

and Mr Hyde are the noble males infected by the new strain of syphilis and

developing General Paralysis of the Insane (Lishman 1987, 280); the charac-

teristics of the Werewolf are the late stages of rabies (Lishman 1987, 303).

If the sceptical argument against Evil as a coherent universal concept needs

further strengthening, then Figure 1 shows that the usage of Evil has waxed

and waned over time. From 1500 onwards, the usage of Evil as a term did

not correlate with either of its common synonyms, bad or wrong. Nor is it

correlated with its supposed opposite of being virtuous.

If an Evil act is some form of particularly-wrong or bad act, if there is

no relationship between these terms and Evil, then it suggests that Evil is

something different if it exists at all.

Modern Evil revivalists attempting to rescue the concept of Evil from scep-

ticism have primarily focused on secular and reductive accounts of Evil.

Namely, Evil as a moral concept that can be reduced to and is equivalent

to one or more non-moral or physical constructs. On their side is the reality

5



1 Introduction

Figure 1.1: Ngram of usage of the words Evil, bad, wrong and virtueus 1500-
2019

of Evil as a diabolical act of only intrinsic value to the perpetrator, often

with little extrinsic benefit, unlike theft or other common wrong. David

Fuller is an exemplar of the challenges for any philosophical account of Evil.

His deeds, called Evil served no extrinsic purpose but he was driven to

commit such deeds throughout his life. Many of these deeds are seen as

repugnant.

David Fuller (born 4 September 1954) is, in many ways, an archetype of

normality, or at least is a manifestation of Arendt’s “The Banality of Evil”.

At the time of his arrest in his mid-60s, he is or was married to a nurse and

has two adult children. He was an electrician and maintenance supervisor

at the local hospital. A keen bird spotter who sat on the borderline between

being a professional and serious amateur photographer. In his earlier years,

he had accompanied soon-to-be-famous bands on tour as their photographer.

6



1 Introduction

He was quiet, drank beer and was not “woke”. In short, a fairly ordinary,

peaceful member of society on the point of retirement.

This tranquility was punctured when the sins of his youth caught up with

him. While many males in their 20s make poor choices, David’s poor choice

was to hunt, rape and murder two separate women. These murders earned

him the label of the bedsit murderer, and at the time, they were never solved

or repeated until a cold case team extracted a DNA profile and obtained a

family link from a DNA registry, identifying David as the murderer.

The subsequent search of his house after his arrest revealed that David had

also performed over 100 acts of necrophilia in the morgue of the hospital

where he worked. All of these acts were carefully documented and pho-

tographed, with the Police able to recover the hard drives of the images and

videos from where David had secreted them.

Fuller was sentenced to a whole-of-life sentence in 2021 and is now in a

prison with the cheerful nickname of “Monster manor” owing to the nature

of the prisoners incarcerated.

Hereafter, this thesis will use Fuller as a specific exemplar of what society

means by Evil as opposed to deeply Wrong. Both Formosa (2013) and

Garrard (2002) argue that any reductive account of Evil needs to describe,

evaluate and explain Evil. This thesis proposes and then defends a defini-

7



1 Introduction

tion of Evil as a novel conjunctive thick concept comprising a description

of why the deed is Evil and a normative account of why it is wrong. This

account focuses on the Evil deed and its consequences to the victim and

society. It stands in contrast to the more prevalent unitary analytic de-

scription of Evil to elucidate precisely a particular core feature that must

be present for an act to be Evil. It also builds on many years of field

work. Chapter 2 will contextualise the revival of secular constructs of Evil

within the broader philosophical debate on Evil and the move away from

those accounts that require a commitment to any theological or supernatu-

ral metaphysics. Chapter 3 will outline the Social-Harm account of a thick,

conjunctive definition of secular Evil as an initial placeholder. Chapter 4

will position this placeholder within the framework of Normative Ethics,

while Chapter 5 will highlight the limitations in several notions of scep-

ticism towards Evil,particularly from Moore’s “Naturalistic fallacy”. The

following three chapters will contrast the Social-Harm account with differ-

ing unity approaches to defining Evil. Chapter 6 considers Evil to be the

work of monsters devoid of humanity. Chapter 6 focuses on definitions of

Evil based on the nature of the Evil deeds. Chapter 7 places Evil as a social

construct. Chapter 8 considers the agent centred accounts of Evil.

8



2 The Evil within that lurks in

plain sight.

The consideration of Evil, in general, and the ethics of Evil, in particular,

are not new domains of philosophical research in any sense. This chapter

introduces a series of differing philosophical accounts of secular Evil that

address the first challenge for articulating any ethical account of Evil, the

metaphysical description of Evil implied in any ontological account of what

qualifies as Evil and how Evil is more than just morally very wrong.

The nature of any proposed Evil underlying or lurking within humanity has

led several philosophers to take differing perspectives on the nature of Evil.

Card refers to Schopenhauer, a philosopher loosely described as focused on

pessimism who takes a dark view of human nature (Card et al. 2002). His

stance is that the external world is inherently meaningless and incoherent.

9



2 The Evil within that lurks in plain sight.

Humanity’s perception of the world is only a rational objectification of our

sense impressions. Hence, there is no God, no grand plan or point to life

except that we introduce or create through the arts, logic, mathematics or

imagination (Wicks 2021). That underpinning our engagement as individu-

als with external reality and each other is the violence and Evil that rests

within human nature. Violence and Evil drive us forward to engage with

the world and each other, with inevitable consequences. For Schopenhauer,

creativity helps us rise above our inherent nature and the “sage” has es-

caped from being an individual distinct from the world, leaving Evil behind

(Wicks 2021).

In diametric contrast, Forti (2019) argues that Evil started as “privatio

boni”, or the absence of Good. Despite its attribution to Plato, this stance

towards the nature of Evil arose from the work of Saint Augustine de Natura

Chignell (2021) and is inherently but not necessarily a theological account of

the metaphysics of Evil. To illustrate, in the Abrahamic traditions, Good is

the presence of God. Evil becomes personified as Demons and the absence of

God. The usual version in the Bible and derivative works like JRR Tolkien’s

“The Silmarillion” is that God created Angels. One Angel had more powers

than all the others. This more knowledgeable or powerful Angel rebels and

corrupts others, and this host loses the ensuing battle with God and the

faithful Angels before this host is thrown out of heaven into hell.

10



2 The Evil within that lurks in plain sight.

Therefore, the absence of any supernatural God or supersensory realms is

inherent in any secular account of Evil. As Forti outlines, one’s position on

the nature of Evil transforms into adopting one of two positions (Forti 2019,

207).

1. Evil does not exist; only ignorance of the metaphysical nature of en-

tities permits a belief in it.

2. Evil does exist but risks transformation into an independent entity in

its own right rather than being dependent on or a property of entities.

The first position argues that Evil only has meaning from a specific per-

spective. Changing or significantly broadening one’s perspective allows the

chimaera of Evil to evaporate. The sceptic’s position on secular Evil is that

it simply does not exist as a concept in its own right. Being a fallen angel

implies a prior existence as an angel. If there are no angels, there is nothing

or no one to fall.

Forti’s second position holds and accepts that Evil is not an ontologically

independent entity and seeks to answer what Evil is by outlining a series of

philosophical positions. . To support a naturalistic account of Evil without

Evil being an ontologically independent entity, Forti (2019) argues that the

second position builds upon Plato’s view that no man can do Evil as Evil

has an independent ontological substance that intrudes on the actions of

11



2 The Evil within that lurks in plain sight.

man, making the deeds and the doer Evil.

Forti describes how Hegel argues for a radical rejection of dualism (Forti

2019, 307–8). She sought to downplay Evil as only an error in the perception

of the truth, a lack of knowledge and awareness of the whole. Evil may be

inherent in power but represents only power’s distance from the truth, and

gaining knowledge of the truth remediates Evil. In response to the problem

of Evil, Hegel argued that Evil effectively did not exist as a distinct entity. It

was only a subordinate element in history and ultimately only a “vanquished

nullity”. Forti argues that Marx took a similar view that Evil is only a bit of

a player that disappears through taking a positive role in the “overarching

dialectic”. Forti argues that this stance has also led to constant attempts

to rationalise totalitarian regimes and their brutal acts (Forti 2019, 307).

Forti (2019) argues that secularisation has broken or at least weakened the

linkage between Evil and power. She sees Hobbes as arguing that Evil is

not defined by objective morality or ontological condition; instead, it is part

of the human condition. So what an individual likes is good; what the same

individual hates is evil. Hobbs instead outlines that society functions ac-

cording to the reason of sovereign law, where the state’s power is in ensuring

a good, safe life. Hence, power has lost its transcendent property, the prop-

erty to save the individual after death. Instead, the individual’s power is

12



2 The Evil within that lurks in plain sight.

constrained to allow society to collectively, on average, flourish in this life

(Forti 2019, 310–11).

Forti argues that Kant resumed the Christian duality concerning Evil. She

claims that Kant restored the reality of Evil as being within the heart of all

humans. Evil is that which corrupts the upright faculty of human judgment.

Obedience to the moral law (Kant’s categorical imperative) leads to self-love

and Good. Forti believes Kant got lost because if Evil is an inevitable stain

upon humanity, then free will can not be the basis of human morality. The

best Kant can do is to state that Evil is the ultimate example of using

humanity as a means to an end, not an end in itself, and so is immoral

(Forti 2019, 311–13).

Forti (2019) articulates the notion of power and its relationship to Evil,

which she calls the “Dostoevsky paradigm” owing to its derivation from

the literary works of Dostoevsky. Forti provides a theological account in

this metaphorical approach where various demons, as evil manifestations of

human impulses, all seek to replace God and his infinite freedom. As finite

beings, demons can not create but can only destroy. So, for Dostoevsky,

Evil enters the world as a diabolical disease of power, leading to destruction

or evil leads to power and power and then to nihilism or Freud’s death

wish.

13



2 The Evil within that lurks in plain sight.

This Dostoevsky paradigm links the predator and the hapless prey through

violence or the cynical leader to the masses incapable of resistance. Such a

paradigm inevitably leads to Forti (2019) viewing Evil as a self-destructive

power and the existence of a moral duality, with the wicked demons con-

fronting the absolute victims on the other side. However, in late democra-

cies, Evil has become the accumulation of unnecessary suffering from every-

day actions by typical actors within society. This description leads Forti to

argue to reevaluate Arendt and Foucault’s works in light of the Dostoevsky

paradigm. She held that Arendt’s banality of Evil can arise from Foucalt’s

“thantopolitics”, or the politics of death that follows from the slippage of

“biopolitics”, or the politics of living despite ordinary or good intentions

and not just evil intentions (Forti 2019, 313–14).

Forti (2019) brings these descriptions of Evil together with the common

themes of transgression, power and death that underpin the work of Primo

Levi, where evil and power occupy a grey zone. So, instead of absolute

demons on one side and absolute victims on the other, mediocre demons and

their desire for normality and positivity emerge. For Forti, Evil is a system

of wicked actors, a few zealous or committed agents and the broader circle of

many acquiescent spectators. The drive for death becomes counterbalanced

by the will to live. Nevertheless, for Forti, not judging the actions of the

few and remaining thoughtless is a new threat to society, and we should

14



2 The Evil within that lurks in plain sight.

embrace our free will to be active participants in our lives. For Forti, the

sin of pride echoes the original sin of disobedience, yet pride in ourselves is

the best counter to Evil (Forti 2019, 314–15).

However, none of these positions addresses the moral question of what quali-

fies as Evil and how the act is morally wrong. They all focus on the ontology

of Evil as residing within the Evil-doer yet remaining distinct from and cor-

rupting their humanity. However, the morality of any deed is at the root

of how the deed transforms into an Evil deed. Murder is the circumstances

and intent of the killing, not the act of killing. Society justifies or accepts

specific, deliberate killings, but not all such killings.

The next chapter describes and discusses the mixed account adopted in this

thesis and outlines the attempt to address the apparent dilemma in describ-

ing Evil. Evil is commonly held to exist by the lay population and especially

by the Police and Prison oficers who are disproportionately encounter Evil-

doers in their role. Yet philosophy struggles to provide a coherent account

of the ethics of Evil. This thesis proposes, tests and defends a Social-Harm

account that prioritises Victim-centred and Spectator-centric accounts of

Evil. This placeholder account also assumes that Forti’s second position is

correct. Evil does exist, but it is not an independent entity; secondly, a

naturalistic account of such Evil is possible, plausible and defendable. Such

15



2 The Evil within that lurks in plain sight.

a naturalistic account will define Evil by describing Evil, and Korsgaard’s

reflective normativity (Korsgaard et al. 1996) will outline why such acts are

morally wrong.

Any naturalistic account is a reductive theory. Evil gets reduced to its core

axiomatic concepts, which are present in all secular, interpersonal Evils.

Without which axiomatic concepts being present, the deed would not be

classed as being an Evil deed.

16



3 The Social-Harm account

3.1 Describing Evil is to know Evil

This chapter describes the Social-Harm reductive, naturalistic account of

Evil and places this account in the context of the central debate of this thesis.

The Social-Harm account of Evil seeks to capture Korsgaard’s normative

ethics as the basis for its moral claims about the philosophical definition of

Evil being the definition of what makes a deed an Evil-deed, with Evil-doers

being secondarily defined as those agents who perform Evil-deeds.

Any naturalistic claim has to first address Moore’s claim that any natu-

ralistic claim is a fallacy (Moore 1903). Using Good as his moral property

Moore (1903) considers three classes of ethical questions (para. 24) as being

central to all ethics;

1. What is meant by “The Good”?

17



3 The Social-Harm account

2. What things or deeds are Good in themselves?

3. How should what exists in the world be as good as possible?

These, consecutively, refer to the metaethical question of what is Good.

The second question is the normative question of how to judge goodness?

Lastly, the final question is the applied ethical question is what is good in

this particular situation.

The significance is self-evident in any discussion of Evil. If Evil exists, it is a

different category of moral objects from being simply Wrong. The challenge

in any definition is both the description of Evil deeds and to articulate why

those deeds are not morally Good or simply Wrong deeds.

Moore has framed the argument by his famous objection to naturalistic

ethics or that Good or Evil is capable of being reduced to natural properties

(Moore 1903, chap. 1). His position is that moral objects are universal and

non-natural and, through supervenience, add the property of Good or Evil

to a natural object. So, a natural object or deed might be an example of

Evil, but Evil itself is more than any particular instantiation. Any attempt

to define the universal metaphysics of an abstract object by the particular

ontology of a non-abstract natural example is a class error and the claim of

equivalence is a fallacy by definition. Moore also argues that any nominalist

naturalistic descriptions of ethics, though using the Theory of Evolution,

18



3 The Social-Harm account

are fatally flawed (Moore 1903, chap. 2). This is now a deeply mistaken

understanding of the Theory of Evolution, but reflects the state of science

and its limited understanding of inheritance in 1903. Making for Moore,

natural selection another manifestation of the naturalistic fallacy equating

a natural desirable property like health with an abstract moral property of

being good (Moore 1903, para27).

Some 90 years later, Korsgaard et al. (1996) argue a contrary position,

that a moral object is precisely the description of its natural properties. So

Evil is the set of natural objects, where each and every member of this

set describes the property of being Evil. The description of Evil is then

the reduction of the general to the naturalistic properties of the particular.

This understanding builds upon the explosion of scientific knowledge and

central role of natural selection in the flourishing of species and ecosystems

over the intervening years since Moore’s work was published. The theory

of Evolution is now a behemoth fully capable of answering Moore’s early

criticisms. Recent advances in functional neuro-imaging and neuro-anatomy

support a reductive account of the psychological person being a brain state,

supported by the physical body providing life-support functions and existing

within a social system. Morality reverts to a modern version of Aristotle’s

virtue ethics, where the flourishing of society maximises the individual’s and

the capacity of the society to safely raise children. This naturalist position

19



3 The Social-Harm account

Korsgaard calls “Normative Ethics.”

The Social-Harm account endeavours to capture the elements of a deed

needing to be present for the deed to be described as Evil instead of be-

ing simply harmful or wrong. Using a similar methodology as DSM-V

(American-Psychiatric-Association 2013), this definition considers only ob-

jective markers of an event being Evil. While this drives reliability, it

excludes common elements of the folk accounts of Evil, particularly cru-

elty or sadistic pleasure. Although such elements are often foundational

to the folk concept of Evil, objectively determining their presence during

an event and their relationship to the event being called Evil is inherently

problematic. The BDSM subculture would view taking sadistic pleasure in

the suffering of others as core to being a “Dominant” within a dominant-

submissive sadomasochistic relationship, as described by the social rules of

that sexual subculture. This subculture would not view someone taking

sadistic pleasure as Evil but rather a shared intimacy that meets the asym-

metrical desires of both partners. Different sexual subcultures would view

the same deeds and the “perpetrator” of such deeds quite differently, feel-

ing they are indeed utterly depraved and Evil. So taking sadistic pleasure

in the suffering of others is not a necessary marker of Evil? Determining

intent is even more problematic. How is intent, and precisely the intent to

cause suffering, determined? Personally interviewing sadistic offenders or

20



3 The Social-Harm account

serial killers reveals they say one thing before arrest or in unguarded mo-

ments and another when “supported” or “advised” by their lawyer while in

custody facing dire consequences. Once incarcerated, they have little moti-

vation to tell the truth. Regardless, those caught, brought before the courts

and imprisoned are only a minority of a sub-group of the wider sub-group

of Evil persons.

The Social-Harm account is a conjunctive account of three clauses, which

when each and all are true means the deed was an Evil-deed and the perpe-

trator is an Evil-doer.

1. The deed causes objective harm that leads to measurable and perma-

nent and significant changes to the human victim themselves and not

just property, with the typical example in humans being damage to

the neurological system, including causing fatal injuries.

2. And a culpable agent instigated the deed.

3. Moreover, the deed causes terror or moral outrage in the society where

the event occurs. The event is such that it impune’s the coherence

of that society to collectively flourish and robs individual members of

feeling morally or physically safe.

Each of the three clauses have distinct roles that must be collectively and

individually true for the Social-Harm description of Evil to be valid. Each

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3 The Social-Harm account

will be discussed as will objections to each.

The first clause is a conjunctive threshold claim that aims to distinguish

between Evil and Wrong deeds. Wrong deeds are seen as causing short-lived

distress and may even cause discomfort or minor injury. As an example of a

Wrong deed, even if performed by an Evil character, is Formosa’s malicious

bus passenger performed a wrong deed by being gratuitously rude to the

driver, but this was not an Evil deed. It did not cause any permanent

harm to the driver. In contrast, an Evil deed causes life-changing or fatal

injuries from which physical and psychological recovery is impossible. In

a naturalistic model, the self is a manifestation of nervous system. If the

nervous system is damaged or destroyed, the sense of self is irrevocably

changed. The victim’s life will be measurably changed forever; even if they

can establish a new normal, it will always be a reduction in what they

previously had.

An apparent immediate reactive counter to the Social-Harm account is the

use of neuro-trauma as the exemplar of irreversible harm to the sense of self

and the victim’s capacity for participation in society for humans. The first

clause is describing the ontology of the event as it impacts the victim. It

is not addressing the metaphysical nature of Evil and does not make any

comment on the Evil-doer. The same injuries could be caused by non-evil

22



3 The Social-Harm account

means, such as a motor vehicle accident but the first clause does not seek

to make any moral claim. On an alternative water world filled with amoeba

that do not possess a brain as we would understand it, then the damaging

of one’s flotation bladder so the victim slowly sinks into the darkness of

the crushing depths as the victim’s peers and family watch helplessly on,

would serve the same purpose on that world. The first clause would also

serve as an account of a catastrophic deed for an alternative account of Evil

morality.

Three classic neurological sequelae are associated with life-changing injuries

in the context of Evil, each with a poor prognosis. Death is the first and

most straightforward. The deed killed the victim, and their life is over,

robbed of all potential.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is just one member of the fam-

ily of trauma-related changes to the brain. The DSM-V outlines how this

is a constellation of a significant event, the development of intrusive re-

experiencing of the event, and subsequently avoiding reminders. Associated

with this are significant changes in the victim’s cognitive, mood, arousal and

reactivity levels to the point where significant social and occupational im-

pacts last for more than a month (American-Psychiatric-Association 2013).

Associated with this stable constellation of symptoms is a stable constella-

23



3 The Social-Harm account

tion of findings across various neuro-imaging studies (Van der Kolk 2014).

Fascinatingly, the various neuro-trauma diagnoses have stable changes in

various brain structures, especially in the mid-brain. Increasingly, the phys-

ical brain becomes not a single organ but rather a cluster of cooperating

nuclei, each with its function that connects the body to the frontal lobe, the

anatomical home of the self. The other key observation is that what trauma

victims describe in their experiences matches the role of the areas where

measurable damage or change occurs. The prognosis for recovery in this

spectrum of impairments is 25-50% (Hébert and Amédée 2020), depending

on a bewildering array of factors, but this is probably an overestimate due

to a combination of under-reporting and ongoing research. In comparison,

gender reassignment surgery has a 70% success rate for physical recovery,

with an impaired outcome of 23% driven by comorbidities or surgery com-

plications for what can be substantive surgery. While over 90% of patients

post gender reassignment surgery make a full psychological recovery, and

only 7% later detransitioned (Hall, Mitchell, and Sachdeva 2021). Other

studies paint an even more positive prognosis.

The third exemplar is phantom limb pain, representing permanent damage

to the peripheral nervous system. Following an amputation, 80% of patients

experience an ongoing awareness of the limb with severe pain associated. Of

this group, 25-50% continue to have severe life-limiting chronic pain despite

24



3 The Social-Harm account

optimal therapy (Erlenwein et al. 2021).

The key idea is that the threshold of harm needed for a deed to be deemed

Evil in a naturalistic model is one that impacts the nervous system, causing

significant life-changing structural and functional alterations to the victim,

which prevents or inhibits recovery from the trauma.

There are two styles of counterexamples to the first clause. The first is

the victim of “knee capping”, where a gunshot to the back of the knee

frequently leads to life-long physical disability. The objection is that this is a

significant life-changing non-neurological injury, arguing against any single

type of injury or organ damage as the basis for a definition of an injury

that is significant enough to be deeded an Evil deed. Instead, the “knee

capping” counter example argues for the amount of functional change to the

individual as an alternative approach to a threshold claim. If this matters,

as it does not significantly change the overall argument, the difficulty with

any functional claim is that it is subjective and varies over time and context.

For the Social-Harm description, the “kneecapping” style of objection fails

because such injury usually occurs as part of torture within the context

of terrorism or organised crime, which also directly causes PTSD as well

as the physical injury. The resultant chronic pain syndrome from the gun

shot wound is also a permanent injury to the peripheral nervous system.

25



3 The Social-Harm account

So complex events with many elements, such as kneecapping, do pass the

threshold to be Evil within this formulation of the Social-Harm model.

The second class of objection is more troubling to the Social-Harm account.

These are where women in care facilities, who are in a persistent vegeta-

tive state, are raped and become pregnant, giving birth unexpectedly (Fins

2019). Given the mothers in such cases are in a persistent vegetative state,

they can not suffer any harm as postulated by the Social-Harm description.

This makes such a heinous event apparently not Evil. Equally, if the baby is

unharmed through the lack of antenatal care and a reactive delivery process,

then the only harm will be secondary, but this harm may be substantial

and cause measurable damage leading to harm. There is a substantive liter-

ature on psychological and physical effects of adverse childhood events such

as the social rejection and consequent emotional neglect of a child born in

such circumstances that would certainly breach the threshold postulated in

the Social-Harm account of Evil (Witt et al. 2019). Nevertheless, that a

rape and consequent pregnancy of a patient in a persistent vegetative state

by a nurse might not be inherently Evil, and just revolting or wrong will

be discussed further subsequently. This class of objection to the threshold

clause certainly highlights that all deeds that meet the threshold clause are

candidates for an Evil deed, but not all despicable or disturbing deeds meet

the threshold for being deemed Evil by the Social-Harm account as they

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3 The Social-Harm account

cause insufficient social distress. As will be later discussed later, Moore

argues this is exactly the fallacy inherent in any naturalistic account of

morality. Any particular instantiation may indeed be an exemplar of a

moral abstract object like Evil, but the abstract universal moral object is

not defined or constrained to a set of instantiations.

The second clause in the Social-Harm account outlines the cause of the

injury, where the cause was a human, a human who willfully instigated

the deed to occur. The term “instigated” also includes those deeds where

one person created the situation where another person performed the deed,

instead of only those situations where the instigator and the deed doer

were the same person. The term culpable also excludes deeds where mental

illness was the driving factor, and the capacity to distinguish right from

Wrong has been lost.

Obvious objections include that someone who commits an Evil deed is not

necessarily an Evil person or Evil doer. This distinction captures the differ-

ence in law between murder and manslaughter. Both result in the unlawful

death of another, but the difference is the offender’s intention or level of

conduct. If it does not meet the threshold in a complex multi-part definition

of culpable homicide (Crimes Act 1961 S167-168), then the unlawful death

is called manslaughter (Crimes Act 1961 Section 178). An Evil doer, in

27



3 The Social-Harm account

contrast, is someone who repeatedly commits Evil deeds, such as the BTK

killer.

The second clause by design excludes any concept of intent. This exclusion

seems an oversight given cruelty or lists of mental states such as Kramer’s;

namely sadistic malice, heartlessness, or extreme recklessness are common in

accounts of Evil (Formosa 2019, 259). In search of making the Social-Harm

description of Evil, one that can be verified objectively, the inability to

objectively measure the perpetrator’s intent at the time of the deed drove

the exclusion from the account, making the Social-Harm account of Evil

more reliable if somewhat unsatisfying.

Consider the robber who shot the shopkeeper during a robbery that has

gone wrong as an example of the dilemma. Did the robber intend to harm

or kill the victim or merely intimidate them? Different jurisdictions have

come to different positions from implied malice as the shooting occurred

within the context of a crime (MacIntyre et al. 2021) to manslaughter

or reckless murder without intent (Kessler Ferzan 2021). To be legally

culpable of a crime in most juristrictions derived from the English legal

system requires both actus reus (a guilty act) and mens rea (a guilty mind)

within the statutes of a given legal system. An act which seems Evil from

a folk perspective need not possess all three of these requirements and yet

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3 The Social-Harm account

still be seen as Evil. An example might be Brigadier General Nguyễn Ngọc

Loan, whose infamous execution of Captain Nguyễn Văn Lém at the end of

the Vietnam War was captured in the iconic image taken by Eddie Adams.

This photo horrified many and was called an Evil deed. It crosses the

threshold of severity and nature to be an Evil deed, but the executioner

was not legally culpable. By the Vietnamese law operating at the time, the

Brigadier was allowed (and required) to execute spies who murdered fellow

South Vietnamese officers, and Captain Nguyễn Văn Lém was just such a

spy. Brigadier General Nguyễn Ngọc Loan therefore performed neither a

guilty act nor had a guilty mind. He was “just” performing his professional

role in difficult circumstances. However, for the lay-public, that the photo

is horrific and haunting, makes the claim of the deed being Evil almost self-

evident. Nevertheless, it does not fulfill the second clause of the Social-Harm

account of Evil and the Brigadier was not charged with a crime, moved to

the US and opened a pizzeria after the war.

Reliability is not the same as validity, so an objection to the second clause

would be that it is overly inclusive. The serial rapist and murderer, Colonel

Williams of the Royal Canadian Air Force, seems to be both Evil and very

different from a careless act that caused the victim life changing injuries or

death. The absence of intent or mens rea from the culpability clause seems

to lead to a category error in the claim that both men are equally wrong.

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3 The Social-Harm account

A plausible defence for the Social-Harm description from such an objection

is the third clause and the differing level of social distress following the two

different fatal events. Yet this is still a fatal objection given the standard is

that each arm of a hybrid account has to be individually true in all instances

of Evil for the account to be valid. The second clause, excludes acts which

present as Evil. It may also be simultaneously overly broad, meaning self-

evidently, only wrong acts might be included within the definition of Evil

if they cause sufficient harm.

If the first two clauses are the descriptive elements in the Social-Harm ac-

count of Evil of what is an Evil deed, the third is the normative clause

as to why the deed is morally Evil, where the deed’s impact on society

decides its moral value and whether the action is morally right or wrong.

This clause aims to capture how others in society react to the deed, with

the examples used being a moral panic or moral outrage. Serial killers and

terrorists spread fear through the communities and society in which they

perform their deeds. The nature and severity of the fear created is sufficient

to change that society and how it functions.

As discussed later, the third clause does not presuppose any particular meta-

physical assumptions for moral judgement beyond the core claim of social

realism. It is agnostic to the nature and priorities of a particular society

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3 The Social-Harm account

beyond its ability and wish to collectively flourish, so accepting that differ-

ent societies will have different a priori priorities and beliefs as to what is

right. It accepts that there can be more than one correct answer or different

right answers between different environmental contexts across different so-

cial contexts. In accepting this, naturalistic descriptions reject the monist

idea that there is a single a priori universal moral value like “Evil” or “The

Good” that underpins a unitary description of morality. Instead, for any

naturalistic account, the moral principle is an a posteriori description of

the psychological and cognitive impacts of what did happen as compared

to societal norms and expectations of what should happen.

A modern version of evolutionary-based virtue-style ethics characterises this

perspective. The form and function of the DNA molecules and the cells that

house them are all manifestations of the laws of physics and chemistry. The

body comprises organs that are collections of cells. The DNA therefore en-

codes the information needed for the human to be born and codifies their

capacity to engage with a given environment. The society where the indi-

vidual is born and raised provides the resources and safety needed for the

individual to achieve first sexual maturity and then successfully raise the

next generation. Social rules are a combination of neuro-biology as to what

is possible but also what is socially necessary to raise successive generations

of children successfully in a given environment.

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3 The Social-Harm account

The interplay between the normative and descriptive elements of the Social

Harm captures these elements of a folk description of Evil. Neo-Aristotelian

flourishing is the flourishing of society as a whole, which from an evolu-

tionary perspective is the successful rearing of the next generation by this

generation. Any action or belief that supports or enhances this is good and

anything that diminishes or impairs successfully raising the next generation

is wrong. Evil deeds are those deeds that disrupt society and threaten the

sense of social coherence, so risking the ability of the society to procreate

through collective flourishing. Yet, for many war, where society causes delib-

erate harm to another group, is not seen as Evil, because the act of fighting

and harm does not cause any moral injury to the society. This is the sense

of societal reaction that the third clause captures. The social context of a

deed and the reaction of society to the deed is the normative function that

determines if the deed is held to be right or wrong. Simplistically killing an

external invader is not Evil as society is afraid of the invader and so this is

the “right” thing to do. While shooting the local Priest or some innocent

child is wrong to the point of Evil if it frightens or horrifies society.

This combination of a descriptive and a normative account of Evil is con-

sistent with Railton (2017) position on such thick concepts underpinning

the socio-scientific explanatory basis of naturalistic realism. Roberts (2013)

and Korsgaard et al. (1996) also supports such a conceptualisation. Kurtz

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3 The Social-Harm account

(1955) argues that this position reduces morality to a description with an

associated implied justification in that by describing that “X is Y”, we also

imply this equivalence is what it means to be Y. The counter-argument

Kurtz raises is why “X ought to be Y”, implying that X causes Y and

opening the debate around Hume’s classic is/ought argument. Kurtz con-

siders this position from an alternative non-naturalistic analysis that fo-

cuses on the analysis of language, accepting Russell’s characterisation of

this approach as “the aim (of ethics) is not practice, but propositions about

practice” (Kurtz 1955, 121). Highlighted is the focus on using moral words,

and Kurtz uses for his explanatory example Ayer’s emotivism, which char-

acterises a non-cognitivist morality that only claims feelings about a moral

dilemma.

The third clause argues against a pure social account of Evil in that society

has frequent moral panics where no Evil deed has occurred and such deeds

maybe be Wrong but are not Evil in the sense being argued. Examples

are numerous, but the McCarthy anti-communist witch hunt or the current

transphobic rhetoric serve as iconic examples. These moral panics cause so-

ciety to alter its behaviour, fearing for its integrity, but without any basis.

This counterexample argues that while the societal reaction is normative,

this normative function is not necessarily and implicitly linked to the de-

scriptive elements of Evil, meaning the Social-Harm account of Evil does

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3 The Social-Harm account

not necessarily describe a coherent account of Evil where each test is indi-

vidually true as well as the account itself. This raises concerns about the

nature of the normative claim and the meta-ethical positions of Naturalism

and non-Naturalism. Concerns that Moore seeks to amplify and clarify.

This thesis will not open the version of Pandora’s box, which is the debate

as to whether free will is compatible with determinism. The Social-Harm

account is a reductionist model of Evil that assumes agency. One famous

characterisation of Evil is the psychopath. Despite the term not featuring

in DSM-V (American-Psychiatric-Association 2013), like the term Evil, the

construct of someone being a psychopath remains in the popular vernacular.

Psychopaths are colloquially described as having a “superficial charm” and

being able to manipulate others easily. However, they may be able to learn

and adapt quickly, lack empathy and remorse, and engage in criminal or

harmful behaviour without feeling guilt or regret. A popular question in

Psychiatry is whether the psychopath is an evolutionary dead end. Such

individuals will have children but only participate destructively in raising

them, so the “genes” for psychopathy should die out, but they do not. This

description of the psychopath is analogous to the Evil agent or the Evil doer,

who gains little or no evolutionary advantage in the medium to long term

through acts of deliberate cruelty, yet truly Evil deeds deliberately caused

by terrible Evil agents are common across the ages. Patton, Smith, and

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3 The Social-Harm account

Lilienfeld (2018) raises the possibility that psychopaths differentially sur-

vive and then go on to become transformational leaders in first-responder

or combat-type scenarios. This position suggests a critical role for the de-

gree of socialisation, which is higher in the case of those who become first

responders and lower in those who perform Evil deeds, yet for both the abil-

ity to achieve the maximum short-term personal benefit from the moment

without being overwhelmed is advantageous.

Also out of scope for this thesis is a discussion on Wittgenstein’s position

on Evil being a family of wrongs that share standard features, especially

the distress to the broader society, but are also distinct. His position seeks

to bring together other types of Evil such as Theological, Social and nat-

ural Evils. From the perspective of Russell’s type theory, Wittgenstein’s

position would be a second order set containing sets of the different type of

propositional functions describing each type of Evil (Whitehead and Rus-

sell 1910, 1:168). If that position is true, then Wittgenstein’s account is

subsumed by the Social-Harm account, but a formal discussion is beyond

the scope of this thesis.

The next chapter outlines Korsgaard et al. (1996) description of “Normative

Ethics”. This discussion will elaborate on how, for Korsgaard, a reductive

naturalist account of morality is a normative account of the morality of a

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3 The Social-Harm account

deed and an account of the deed. Each justifies the other. A reductive

naturalistic account describes the Evil deed and, through that description

also explains why the deed is morally Evil.

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4 Normative ethics

The Social-Harm as a naturalistic reductive account of Evil is by no means

the first such description of Evil. Before considering alternative accounts

of Evil, it is crucial to define the stance of this thesis on normative ethics.

Simplistically, if the previous chapter described what is Evil, this chapter

outlines how the Social-Harm account of Evil claims why it is Evil. This

claim will be a normative claim embracing the position of Korsgaard et al.

(1996).

Korsgaard et al. (1996) argues that the challenge for philosophy is to define

the foundations of morality as being “real” or “objective” but accepts that

moral claims (moral propositions) are ultimately normative. These moral

claims do not merely describe what we should do; they put claims or de-

mands on us to behave or not behave in specific ways to achieve excellence.

She contrasts this with the law that describes obligations to avoid the risk

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4 Normative ethics

of punishments (Korsgaard et al. 1996, Lecture 1).

She accepts that inevitably, what morality demands is complex and the

associated question of “why” or what “justifies” the demands of morality

needs answering. For Korsgaard’s philosophy, it is critical to understand

the nature of the “normative question,” although she further refines the

questions regarding moral concepts.

1. What does the concept mean - how are they defined or analysed?

2. What do they apply to - what things are good, what actions are

obligatory?

3. What underpins the concept? Are they the product of reason, experi-

ence, or religon?

Through answering such questions and the practical or psychological impli-

cations of any theory of moral concepts, any moral theory endeavours to

describe explanatory adequacy. Moral theories must also outline an ade-

quate justification by providing normative criteria for any after applying a

moral theory (Korsgaard et al. 1996, 10).

The risk is that the moral sceptic will successfully claim that no such nor-

mative claim exists for any moral theory. Equally, it is easy to confuse

explanatory and normative claims. Although it is impossible to justify

anything that can not be explained, for Korsgaard, the answer is one of

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4 Normative ethics

perspective. An explanatory claim is in the third person as to what others

should do. A normative claim is in the first person and justifies why the

individual should do it.

The claim is that a normative answer must address three conditions (Kors-

gaard et al. 1996, 16).

1. It must directly address someone in that situation and provide the

answer in the first person, not talk in the third person or be general

about a response.

2. The answer must be transparent about any underlying motivations

and their true nature. The moral agent must truly understand why

this justifies the theory’s claim.

3. The claim needs to appeal sincerely to the agent’s sense of identity.

Korsgaard argues that science has robbed humans of the belief that the

world has a purpose, which is the basis for normative theories. She ar-

ticulates her view of the four options open to the modem ethicist while

attempting to address this deficit of purpose (Korsgaard et al. 1996, 18);

1. Voluntarism, where obligation stems from the command of someone

(a sovereign monarch) as opposed to the previous something (God),

who has legitimate authority over the moral agent and can frame

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4 Normative ethics

laws, that the populace “voluntarily” follow albeit to avoid potential

consequences.

2. Realism is that moral laws are the product of reason argued from fun-

damental axioms or neo-platonic objects expressed as truth functional

propositions. The claim here is that therefore moral laws are logically

true propositions and describe true moral knowledge.

3. Reflective endorsement is the position that moral laws are grounded

in human nature. The philosopher must explain why humanity uses

moral concepts and feels bound by them by both reason and emotional

resonance.

4. Autonomy, where the source of normativity is the agent’s free will,

meaning that the moral laws of society are the moral laws of the

agent.

Korsgaard et al. (1996) offers the defence of her respective positions before

focusing primarily on reflective endorsement.

4.0.1 Voluntarism

Korsgaard et al. (1996) starts with the position of Pufendorf that morality

is imposed on humanity or intelligent beings of a morally indifferent nature

40



4 Normative ethics

through the intervention of God or a God-like sovereign, where God ap-

points the sovereign and the sovereign makes the law[Section 1.3.1 - 1.3.4].

Although according to Hobbes and Pufendorf, the content of laws is indeed

a product of natural reason because the existence of God is justified by

reason, hence the goal-directed actions of God’s earthly agent are also the

product of natural reason. So, the sovereign makes an idea into law, making

the claim that the law is now good and morally normative. The contents

of the law itself is not necessarily morally good. It is that the sovereign or

God made any idea into a law, is what invested the law with normativity.

Based on reason or divine obedience, in this account of morality, the citizen

as a moral agent is duty-bound to obey any such law. Yet, sanctions or at

least the threat of sanctions are still needed as they and they alone which

establish the authority of the legislator. So, it is not merely acquisition

by the citizens to the law that is sufficient. This balance of laws and the

ability to enforce them underpins the divine or sovereign nature of the

legislator and the property of requirement that their laws be obeyed as a

moral principle.

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4 Normative ethics

4.0.2 Realism

The challenge to Voluntarism is that obligation comes from a social contract,

but why should we voluntarily comply with any or even just this particular

social contract when could write our own or choose another? It is hard to

escape, given Hobbes and Pufendorf’s claims about the critical role of the

sovereign’s power to enforce obedience through coercion and force, meaning

that Voluntarism can degenerate into either a might-is-right style argument

or a Foucault-style argument of the agent self-monitoring to ensure social

compliance with the divine decrees. Otherwise, at best it depends on the

(fortuitous) concordance between the agent and the ruling power’s desires

or at least a mutually beneficial compromise. Based on the realist claim

(Korsgaard et al. 1996, sec. 1.4.1 - 1.4.8) their response to this claim is that

moral obligation is not based on the social coercion of the individual, but is

based upon a justification derived from the claim that there are objective

moral facts about mind independent facts. So society is morally wrong if it

expects the drinking of milk for someone with a lactose intolerance because

drinking milk causes them gastrointestinal symptoms, not because some

authority figure threatens punishment if they do. It would be bad for the

agent, even if no one or importantly no authoritarian figure observed them

drinking milk.

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4 Normative ethics

4.0.3 Autonomy

Korsgaard holds that notably Kant, but also Rawls (Korsgaard et al. (1996),

p.19) argue that autonomy or free will as the basis of answering the norma-

tive question. For Kant, the “categorical imperative is the law of autonomy”

(Korsgaard et al. 1996, 220), leads to the claim by Korsgaard that the nor-

mative claim for a private action driven by free will is based upon a public

claim of compliance with the generalisable categorical imperative (Kors-

gaard et al. 1996). The impression is created that Korsgaard, in an allusion

to Hume’s is/ought paradox, seeks to use Kant’s Categorical Imperative to

bridge the gap between general (societal) norms as the focus of morality,

and the specific ethical norms of the individual, while avoiding any form

of utilitarian claim. In multicultural society, there will be more than one

set of cultural norms to choose from, and there will be different communi-

ties of different sizes. Should a free agent from a small community obey

the societal norm of their group/culture or those of the dominant, may be

even abusive, culture? Either could be justified by the autonomy argument,

which undermines its strength as a normative claim. A defence against

the reality of cultural and ethical plurality is one of the underpinnings to

Korsgaard’s embrace of reflective endorsement.

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4 Normative ethics

4.0.4 Reflective endorsement

Reflective endorsement is Korsgaard’s premiere normative claim (Korsgaard

et al. 1996, 30). It locates morality in human nature and originated from

sentimentalists like Hume, who argued that moral actions manifest human

sentiment through reason. Such a position captures a similar sense to Neo-

Aristotelian virtue theory. Hume’s position does cause Korsgaard some

challenges and she recognises that although Moore’s second and third ethi-

cal questions are addressed, Moore’s first question on what is “Good”, what

is a moral object still needs to be answered (Korsgaard et al. 1996, 52). Her

defence is that Hume’s claim of what is a moral object is based on the cu-

mulative sentiment generated by the moral and emotional impacts on their

family or neighbours and directly on themselves as being the total moral

entity. So feeding the dog chocolate is not morally defensible, It is fun and

the dog will enjoy eating the chocolate but the dog will consequently die.

For Moore, in this instance, the external moral object of “Wrong” would

supervene onto the act rendering the act of feeding the dog chocolate as

a manifestation of a act being morally “Wrong”. For Korsgaard, feeding

the dog chocolate is morally indefensible on the basis of the sentiments cre-

ated as the family and the agent witnesses the distress of the dog’s death

and when they consider all the other moments with the dog they have lost,

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4 Normative ethics

together how the wider society will view them for deliberately poisoning

their dog for “laughs”. By reason any act that creates such harm, engenders

universal condemnation and distress is why such an act is “Wrong”. Pre-

emptively, a normative question can be addressed by reflecting on the usual

or previous consequences of a particular action or applying general moral

principles derived from previous similar actions.

Considering both, Hume feels we can reach a normative or convergent agree-

ment on the moral agent’s character as being a manifestation of their re-

peated choices and actions. The good moral agent wishes to have pride

in themselves, so they collect virtues and try to avoid vices. The norma-

tive question with respect to character, then becomes whether or when we

should yield to our internal desires or to become perceived as virtuous by

society (Korsgaard et al. 1996, Lecture 2, Section 2.2.2). Therefore, prac-

ticing virtues brings happiness to the moral agent through their fulfillment.

Hume states that a virtuous person acts not by duty or obligation but by

the natural motivation that leads to the public approbation of others. One

counter is that one can also act without the right motivation and still gain

the benefit. The other challenge is that self-interest is critical to Hume’s

ethics, and often, what Hume calls secondary virtues like justice still oper-

ate. So, moral actions are undertaken not out of self-interest but to avoid

the social consequences of unjust actions (Korsgaard et al. 1996, Lecture 2,

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4 Normative ethics

Section 2.2.3).

In his book “Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals,” David Hume

introduces the concept of the “sensible knave” as a challenge to the idea that

reason is the basis of morality (Korsgaard et al. 1996, 58). The sensible

knave understands the rules of morality but chooses to break them whenever

it is in their self-interest to break them. Hume argues that the sensible knave

is a logical possibility and that no argument can prove that it is always

irrational to act immorally in every possible circumstance. He acknowledges

that most people would find the sensible knave to be odious, but he argues

that this does not mean the sensible knave is morally wrong from a logical

position (Korsgaard et al. 1996). Consider the example of the starving

survivors who ate the corpses of those who did not survive the initial aircraft

crash, an act that would be seen as wrong but not Evil. In the sense, that

the survivors literally had no choice and eating the bodies was their only

means of survival. They had no other intent or choice.

For Korsgaard, this outlines how reflective endorsement works. Receptivity

is a concept in social theory that refers to how social actors are aware of and

reflect on their actions and embedded social context through reason. It is a

process of self-monitoring and self-reflection that can lead to changes in be-

haviour. Reflexivity is a way of understanding the social world that is more

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4 Normative ethics

complex and nuanced than traditional approaches. It acknowledges that

social actors are not simply passive recipients of social forces but actively

shape and create their social reality.

Korsgaard claims that such a position supports that it is human nature to be

governed by morality, or when considered from every point of view, including

its own, morality ultimately both governs humanity and is also derived from

humanity. In essence, human nature is inherently morally normative, as

humans have no ability to not identity with their moral self or as social

beings, and have no wish to reject social authority or risk ostracisation

(Korsgaard et al. 1996).

Moral agents become exposed to multiple sources, and our adoption or en-

dorsement of only some of these are the conscious choices on the grounds

of social acceptance which defines their answer to any normative question.

This account also avoids the one-dimensional views of Nietzsche and Freud

that morality will tear humanity apart. For Hume, it simply will not, as

moral agents will just choose a different path (Korsgaard et al. 1996). Sim-

ply put, we choose our friends and where we live. The act of choosing is the

act of endorsing and agreeing with the moral obligations the form the basis

of how that particular society collectively flourishes. We are always free to

change our mind and move on.

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4 Normative ethics

Korsgaard then turns to Bernard Williams (Korsgaard et al. 1996, Lecture

2, Sections 2.3.1 - 2.3.9), who claimed that there is a difference between

the objectivity of science and the objectivity of ethics. Williams accepted

at least a version of realism in the former as our beliefs converge on a

shared understanding of a single external reality built upon the physical laws

of the material Universe. He argues that we share a common conceptual

framework of this external world and we also have a dependent personal

concepts on an underlying internal framework selectively constructed from

less dependent concepts such as Williams’ absolute concept of the world.

Of relevance, Korsgaard raises an objection based on the position that cog-

nition is less perspective-dependent than perception-dependent. Korsgaard

asks if Williams is saying that we can share cognitions more easily than

sharing perceptions? This perspective would impact the ability of humans

and aliens to develop a shared “absolute concept of the world”, given that

they live in many differing sensory realities that may only partially overlap if

they are not discrete. Williams assumes this conceptual purism that drives

science would give it automatic precedence over the perceptual (Korsgaard

et al. 1996). A counter to this objection is that it denies neurodiversity

and assumes that cognition of the external world is not a culturally defined

concept. William’s position also conflicts with Nagel’s realism outlined in

his classic “What it is like to be a bat” (Nagel 1980). Williams considers the

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4 Normative ethics

normative question from an external (alien) perspective. For Korsgaard, in

contrast, Hume adopts the reflective endorsement of a human-centric per-

spective. She sees Hume as arguing that morality converges on self-interest,

while Williams argues for congruence towards human flourishing.

To further contrast the two positions, Hume states he is considering funda-

mental human nature and psychology, so if morality is bad for the individual

but good for society, humans are doomed to sit in social silence. Williams

argues that different cultures have different values. If individual values clash

with cultural values, one can change cultures. The old values are not wrong;

they are no longer relevant and discarded.

Korsgaard sees John Stuart Mill as a third philosopher who “adopts” reflec-

tive endorsement (Korsgaard et al. 1996, Lecture 2, Sections 2.4.1 - 2.4.3).

Korsgaard reads Mills as a naturalistic realisty who embraces the idea that

the presence of pleasure and the absence of pain is desirable. Korsgaard

focuses on Mills claim that desire is the normative source in Utilitarianism.

Where constraints or sanctions bind humanity to a particular moral prac-

tice. These can be external, as in the love of others or God and the desire

to please or internal, or the pain of social disapproval for someone is “prop-

erly cultivated” (Korsgaard et al. 1996, 79). Korsgaard postulates from

an internalist position that an agent knowing they have duties or social ex-

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4 Normative ethics

pectations makes them more likely to act upon the social expectations and

enjoy the associated benefits bestowed by that society for conformity.

The Social-Harm account of Evil captures the various senses of the nor-

mative approach to morality that Korsgaard advances. The Social-Harm

account needs to address her three claims that any normative theory of

morality has to answer.

The Social-Harm account describes Evil as a life-changing event defined

by measurable harm, performed by a culpable agent that causes terror or

fear in the broader society in which it occurred. Underpinning the social

reaction is Hume’s sentimentalism. Each directly or indirectly impacted

community member knows by reason that they could have been the vic-

tim, and nothing or nobody would have saved them either. They can put

themselves in the shoes of the victim, as well as have an emotional reaction

to life-changing and potentially life-ending harm caused to the victim. On

top of this personal reaction, each member is validated in their reaction by

others in society having a similar reaction, and each empathises with others

around them. Society comes together through its member’s responses to

this deliberate extreme external event. This collective social reaction built

upon individual responses is what Korsgaard seeks to capture through her

concept of reflective endorsement.

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4 Normative ethics

This chapter seeks to take the definition of the Social-Harm account of Evil

deeds from the previous chapter and considers it in a reductive normative

and naturalistic ethical framework. So, building the case for the validity of

the Social-Harm account as a potentially viable account of Evil. The next

chapter, will provide the contrasting meta-ethical position of Moore who

argues that any naturalist account of morality is a fallacy.

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5 Defending the Social-Harm

account of Evil:

The Social-Harm account of Evil is a hybrid model that makes a reductive

and naturalistic normative claim to give a description of Evil. The key

contra-position to any natural reductionist account of morality is Moore’s

non-natural, intuitive account of morality. Considerable time is devoted to

describing Moore’s argument within the broader intuitionist tradition.

5.1 Naturalism and the intuitionist reply

Naturalism and non-naturalism hold diametric views on meta-ethical claims

about the nature of Evil (or Good). From the naturalistic position, the ca-

pacity for morality is an emergent phenomenon arising from underlying

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5 Defending the Social-Harm account of Evil:

natural processes such as individual consciousness that arise from cognitive

function or are group norms generated from the interaction of group mem-

bers seeking to optimise their reproductive outcome. For Railton (2017),

naturalistic realism is a meta-ethical position that holds that it is possible

to provide comprehensive explanations of ethics from natural phenomena,

where the description is without any unexplained phenomena but equally

without resorting to super-natural, un-natural or historical mythology such

as Plato’s theory of Forms. Railton holds Aristotle as the first philosopher

to make such naturalistic realist claims. Any naturalistic claim needs to

address the challenge of factuality in substantiating its validity, while an

naturalistic ethical claim also needs to address the challenge of normativ-

ity. With respect to factuality, both types of claim share many properties

in common. Both share a common propositional logic; both consider their

respective objects’ general and abstract positions. Both have a modal di-

mension and seek to predict and not just explain. Both seek to be objective

and impartial while avoiding social bias (Railton 2017, 44).

The added normative dimension is the distinguishing feature of a natural-

istic ethical claim. Where the normative element to claim is that which

prescribes or compels action beyond simply describing events. Different

philosophers have focused on varying options for articulating and justifying

the normative especially with regards to naturalism, but Aristotle’s eudai-

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5 Defending the Social-Harm account of Evil:

monia remains the exemplar where the normative is a consequential claim

that judges the rightness of an action or belief by its impact on human or so-

cietal flourishing (Railton 2017, 44). Hobbes and Hume, respectively, took

an alternative stance on the normative claim. They consider the natural

virtues, where natural or innate character traits support societal flourish-

ing. Artificial values complement these natural traits of a given society, like

justice, are learned as the child grows and are at the least to some extent,

social dependent (Railton 2017, 45).

At its core, naturalism argues that by reducing moral properties and their

associated actions to physical and material objects, or derived abstract ideas

or concepts, provides the best understanding of ethical claims, especially in

the face of the exponential growth in scientific knowledge into the 21st

Century. Railton labels this claim as “substantive naturalism” (Railton

2017, 47).

For a non-naturalist, the normative claim and the particular instantiation

are distinct objects, that exist in different realms. A normative moral claim

then supervenes on to a natural object or belief, so conferring a moral prop-

erty onto the natural object or claim. This distinction between the natural

and the moral means that non-naturalism makes the broader claim that

any particular instantiation of a moral claim is always less than the gen-

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5 Defending the Social-Harm account of Evil:

eral moral claim itself. To use Bertrand Russell’s type theory (Whitehead

and Russell 1910, 1:168–75), moral claims are second order functions, while

particular instantiations are members of sets described by first order func-

tions. That there is more to Evil than a naive naturalistic account can

describe does not automatically validate the argument for a non-naturalism

of morality. However, Moore believes his intuitionist account of the nat-

uralistic fallacy does precisely that, making Moore the classic nemesis of

naturalism.

Everyone since Moore describes Moore as an intuitionist, except Moore,

who denies the claim. For Moore, intuitionism makes two claims. The

first is the epistemic claim that moral propositions are self-evident, and

the second is the metaphysical claim that moral properties are not natural

properties (Stratton-Lake 2020). Although often taken as conjoint claims,

the epistemic claim does not inherently imply any particular metaphysical

claim. The often-quoted classic example is the truth of the proposition

“An unmarried man is a bachelor,” as, after all, a bachelor is an unmarried

man. Equally, it does not make any particular claim about the nature of a

bachelor and intimate relationships outside of marriage. It does not need

to for the proposition to be true.

Stratton-Lake (2020) outlines Price’s position that all true knowledge is ul-

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5 Defending the Social-Harm account of Evil:

timately built upon tautologies, namely constantly and self-evidently true

propositions. According to Price, these axiomatic statements are incapable

of proof as much as they do not need proof, hence their foundational role

in intuitionist epistemology (Stratton-Lake 2020). The nuanced point is

the need to distinguish between our intuitive awareness of the truth of

self-evidently true propositions, as described above, and our spontaneous

conscious intuition based on a particular cognitive state. An example of

the latter is Marcie Lyons’ account of surviving her date with the serial

murderer Ted Bundy [https://marcielyons.com/i-survived-a-date-with-ted-

bundy/]. Marcie had an intuition based on her mental state of being sub-

jectively terrified by the individual she was meeting. An intuition that was

not based on any self-evidently true proposition. She did not know the

individual was Ted Bundy, or that he was a highly prolific serial killer of

young women.

5.2 Moore’s counter - the naturalistic fallacy

Moore (1903) (para 3) captures a similar perspective through his two ques-

tions. These questions are central to any consideration of ethics. The first is,

“What kind of things should exist for their own sake”? The second question

is, “What kind of actions should we perform?”

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5 Defending the Social-Harm account of Evil:

Moore distinguishes between them based on the evidence required to verify

the truth of each. Moore calls answers to the first question as “intuitions”.

Where such intuitions can only be known as self-evident truths, claiming

that no other evidence is available or needed to verify the truth of any such

proposition further.

Any answer to the second question has to adopt one of two types of proofs.

The first is causal proof, where the ethical consequences of the action are

the proof of the proposition’s validity for the correct action. The second

type or element of the correctness of any particular action is that it is

a manifestation of an answer to the first question, namely that it is self-

evidently a tautology.

Moore is adamant in his position that there are no absolute answers to the

second question on the correctness of particular actions. He calls answers

to his first questions “intuitions”, as in the usage later adopted by Price.

Moore, however, denies that he is an intuitionist, claiming that intuitionism

argues that it is possible to answer both questions. Moore, in contrast,

claims it is not (Moore 1903).

Stratton-Lake (2020) highlights that Moore is a moral monist, holding that

a singular and universal moral truth underpins the ability to answer the

first question. Moral monism also prevents the ability to answer the second

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5 Defending the Social-Harm account of Evil:

question, as an answer requires the adoption of an ethical pluralism, that no

singular moral truth verifies or underpins a valid claim for the correctness

of an action in a given circumstance.

Later, Langford describes how Moore’s position creates a “paradox of anal-

ysis”, also called the Langford-Moore paradox. A moral proposition is

deemed either uninformative because it is self-evidently always true or the

proposition is inherently untrue in every circumstance despite being actu-

ally informative sometimes. The Langford-Moore paradox claim is that a

moral proposition can not simultaneously be valid and informative (Lang-

ford 1949).

Black (1944) considers various objections to this paradox. He uses numeric

solutions to illustrate his position. Black begins by outlining Moore’s 1942

defence of his original position in Principia Ethica. Moore intended to

compare metaphysical concepts in his analysis. To avoid ambiguity, Moore

never intended for one arm of the identity relationship to be a verbal de-

scription of the other arm. He was comparing the concept of an apple with

the concept of an apple (Black 1944, 263).

Black’s position is that the claim 21 = 21 is both vacuous and different from

that of 3 * 7 = 21. The concept of “3 * 7” makes several claims. Using

the prefix notation, multiply(3,7) is the function that calls for the serial

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5 Defending the Social-Harm account of Evil:

addition of three units each of seven, which in base 10 gives the answer of

2 * 10 (1) + 1, which is equivalent to the concept of 21 on the opposing

side of the identity. Black uses the notation of A(21, 3, 7) to denote this

equivalence but non-identity relationship (Black 1944, 265).

O’Connor (1982) takes a similar stance by arguing that Moore is comparing

a contingent and a necessary proposition and claiming an equivalence. To

support this claim, he considers Lewy’s articulation of the paradox, com-

paring the word “Vixen” with the “Female Fox” concept (O’Connor 1982,

211).

(A) The concept of being a vixen is identical with the concept of being a

female fox;

(B) The concept of being a vixen is identical with the concept of being a

vixen.

Now (1) (A) does not entail anything about the word ‘vixen’ or about the

expression ’female fox”; (2) if (A) and (1) then (3) The proposition that

the concept of being a vixen is identical with the concept of being a female

fox is identical with the proposition that the concept of being a vixen is

identical with the concept of being a vixen.

The challenge is that (3) is a naturalistic paradox by Moore’s formulation.

O’Connor argues that from differing perspectives, there is no paradox. Ex-

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5 Defending the Social-Harm account of Evil:

amples he uses include Frege’s Sense and Reference, where the word Vixen

is the sense and “Female Fox” is the object that the word refers to in an

equivalence but not an identity relationship so that Frege would deny (1).

In contrast, Lewy and O’Connor argue that Moore would deny at least (2)

(O’Connor 1982, 212).

Slobin (1996) uses a different equivalence to undermine Moore’s paradox of

analysis through identity. He argues that the linguistic determinism of a

thought or concept is highly dependent on the social and cultural context

in which the language developed. This position defends the view of ethical

pluralism, denying Moore’s conceptual identity and moral monism (Slobin

1996, 70–71).

Moore’s framing of his epistemology appears to doom it from an intuitionist

perspective. Its remaining attribute is that it does not necessarily imply

any specific metaphysics. Equally, as Stratton-Lake (2020) outlines, non-

naturalist metaphysics is a core belief for many framings of intuitionism,

including Moore’s, where moral objects are cognitive, not solely natural in

any sense and exist only in a supersensible realm. In support of intuitionist

epistemology, moral objects are indefinable, simple ideas only knowable by

intuition or “immediate perception” (Stratton-Lake 2020).

Moore used “Good” as his exemplary moral object and argued that it must

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5 Defending the Social-Harm account of Evil:

be a simple, indefinable object (Moore 1903, para 6) as only complex objects

can be defined (para 7) and that this object must exist in a supersensible,

non-natural realm (para. 66). The presence of such an object is the “yard-

stick”, or attribute,by which a particular complex natural object can be

deemed to be Good (para. 10). Because any natural object is a complex

object, it is capable of definition. Moore uses the example of a horse to

illustrate this where a horse can be good but this is based neither on the

description of a horse in general or the definition of Good in particular.

Equally, it is possible to objectively assess the good in any physical object

as part of its definition. However, this description of good is not generally

applicable to the good in other natural objects. For Moore, only an inde-

finable, simple object existing in a supersensible realm will deliver a moral

monist, generalisable account of moral principles like Good or Evil.

Moore famously denied naturalistic ethics and argued that all such claims

fall foul of his “naturalistic fallacy” or that any such natural claims did not

answer the “open question” as to whether moral properties were natural.

(Moore 1903).

Firstly, outlined below are the key elements of the naturalistic fallacy argu-

ment.

1. A moral property like “Good” is simple and undefined. So it is not

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5 Defending the Social-Harm account of Evil:

any particular “good”; instead, it is the “Good”, a universal moral

property that resides in an alternative supersensible realm. It is not

a complex natural object from the material universe. Like the colour

“yellow,” then the “Good” in effect supervenes on an object, bestowing

upon it the property of being Good.

2. A complex natural object may have the property of being good, but

this complex object is not and can not be the simple property the

“Good” itself. For Moore, any simple property is not an object. So

Y can have the property of X, but X is not an object, and Y does

not describe X. If it did, we could substitute Y for X and make the

vacuous claim of a tautology in that Y is Y without shedding any light

on the nature and properties of X.

3. For Moore, any claim that as the natural object Y, which has the

moral property of X, therefore Y describes X commits the “naturalistic

fallacy”. For emphasis, other non-Y objects can also have the property

of being X without being substitutable for Y.

The basis of the naturalistic fallacy is that, given Moore’s definition of the

categorical distinction between physical and moral properties; no physical

property can be a moral property without committing a category error.

Equally, no universal moral property is reducible to a particular natural

object without committing the fallacy that Moore calls the “naturalistic

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5 Defending the Social-Harm account of Evil:

fallacy”. For Moore, there is always more to morality than naturalism can

explain due to the inherent nature of moral properties as indefinable enti-

ties without properties. Hence, no naturalistic claim can underpin a meta-

ethical account of a moral property like good (or Evil).

There are several counters to this version of Moore’s objection to natural-

istic ethics. The first is attributed to Frege and is the “begging the ques-

tion” claim. The outline of this is that in the first premise, Moore claims

moral properties are not natural properties. In the conclusion, Moore then

uses this claim to justify that natural properties can not describe moral

properties and thereby begs the question as the conclusion is implied in

the premises.The begging-the-question objection is complicated to mount a

counter against and may be why later scholarship on Moore’s work has fo-

cused on the “open question” argument as will be discussed subsequently.

There are two other objections to Moore’s counterargument. The first of

these objections was first made after the beginning of the 20th Century

when light and individual colours were revealed as natural objects. Moore

prior to the discovery of the quantum properties of light had claimed that

colour as another example of a simple and undefined property of an object.

A object can be yellow, but yellow is not described by the object. Within

the standard model of particle physics that emerged subsequently, light is

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5 Defending the Social-Harm account of Evil:

a photon (an object) carrying energy of a particular frequency, meaning

that light is not a simple object like Moore described, rather it is an object

with a property of its own. This new science increases the pressure on

Moore’s claim that moral properties are not physical objects if his examples

of equivalent non-moral non-physical objects are actually physical objects.

The third objection is Mackie’s claim “from queerness” (a title that has not

aged well) (J. Mackie 1990, 38). Mackie was arguing against the existence

of Moral Objectivism as characterised in Moore’s argument of his indefin-

able but simple but non-natural moral properties known only by intuition.

Mackie’s overall argument against such moral objectivism is the “argument

from queerness” against such universal ethereal moral objects and has two

arms.

The metaphysical arm: If non-Naturalism is correct, moral objects must be

unlike any other objects in the material universe to have the metaphysical

properties required to support the claims of moral objectivism. Likewise,

they are not predictable by any empirical scientific theory, such as either

Einstein’s General or Special relativity. This claim seems inherently “odd”

and quite unlikely particularly with the passage of time and the growth of

physics in naturalism.

The epistemological arm: This is the challenge by Mackie that to be aware of

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5 Defending the Social-Harm account of Evil:

something that resides in a supersensible universe and is unlike any material

object, we would need some “special facility of moral perception or intuition”

(J. Mackie 1990, 38), which clearly humans do not have. For Moore, this

is his intuition that a moral object will be recognised by intuition. The

“odd” elements of this claim how does one acquire such an intuitive sense

of moral intuition, maybe through training that builds upon some innate

ability. If the claim is made that for a hidden innate ability, does this

mean the moral imbecile (a delightful Victorian term more prosaically now

called Anti Social Personality Disorder) who has no such innate ability, so

is not morally responsible for the consequences of their actions as they are

“cognitively blind” to morality? This would seem quite “odd” and totally

counter-intuitive.

Moore counter argues for two moral propositions classes (Moore 1903, 3).

The first class or moral propositions or intuitions, which for Moore, are

deemed incapable of proof or disproof and only known by intuition. Moore

denies he is an intuitionist proper as such holds to defending his second

class of moral propositions, which Moore does not. These second class of

propositions address whether an action is right are incapable of proof or

disproof through a consideration of the consequences.

Despite his claims, Moore’s intuitionist position captures one sense of Evil.

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5 Defending the Social-Harm account of Evil:

It has no universal description, but the observer will know it when they see

it. This is the reality for experienced Police and Prison staff who claim that

Evil exists and that they recognise Evil when encountered.

Mackie proverbially holds Moore’s feet to the fire and states that an intu-

ition is an intuition and to claim otherwise “is a travesty of actual moral

thinking” (J. Mackie 1990, 38). Mackie states the best strategy is the “com-

panions in guilt” counter. If there is no empirical knowledge of abstract

moral objects, then there is equally no empirical knowledge of other ab-

stract objects like numbers. Mackie outlines Price’s argument that if we

can create and understand numbers as abstract tools for the study or quan-

tification and numbers. Mackie counter argues whether intuitionism about

morality is not similarly created to rationalise about morality as opposed

to being innate or axiomatic objects that were discovered as Price claims (J.

Mackie 1990, 40)? In contrast, Cowling (2017), in his defence of abstract ob-

jects, argues that mathematical entities and universals are different objects,

undermining Price’s defence of moral objects and accidentally supporting

Mackie’s position.

Moore’s variation of his naturalistic fallacy is the open-question argument

that seeks to show that moral properties cannot be reduced to objective

properties. As a non-naturalist, Moore attempts to answer moral questions

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5 Defending the Social-Harm account of Evil:

purely by analysing the propositions containing them.

1. Suppose a question is answerable by analysing the words alone. In

that case, it is a closed question, such as “it is true that a bachelor is

an unmarried man”, which is true by analysing the words and their

meaning within the context of the proposition.

2. If the question is not answerable by analysing the words alone, it

remains an “open question”.

3. From the naturalistic fallacy argument above, a natural object can

have an instantiation of a given property. However, the universal of

the same property has instantiations on or with other unrelated and

different objects.

4. Hence, no universal moral property can be reduced to any particular or

singular natural object without the claim being a naturalistic fallacy.

5. Hence, no natural object can be the basis for defining a universal

moral property, meaning naturalism is not the basis for morality, but

any particular moral question remains an open question. QED.

A common objection is that Moore has committed a category error. Often

attributed to Frankena (1951), Kurtz (1955) provides a fuller account of the

objection.

Kurtz breaks the open-question argument into two styles of question. The

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5 Defending the Social-Harm account of Evil:

first is the “Is X good?” or “Why ought X exist?” style question (Kurtz

1955, 115). The second is the “Why ought I do X?” style question.

Considering the “Why ought X exist?” question, Kurtz outlines this as

the causation question with two schools of answer: the naturalistic descrip-

tive approach and the alternative non-natural causation approach. Science

favours the former, and Moore, among others, focuses on the latter. Kurtz

argues that scientific descriptions now epistemically predominate.

It is the “Why ought I do X” question that raises the category error for

Kurtz. The answer to this question is either psychological or social. No uni-

fying underlying theoretical structures inevitably or deterministically link a

belief and any subsequent chronically conjoined action as would be seen in

a biological system driven by the singular laws of physics underpinning the

physical universe.

By this argument, Kurtz’s claim is that Moore has conflated the former

question with the latter. So, the question “is this tomato red?” (the in-

stantiation question) asks a different question to the question “why are all

tomatoes red?” (the universal question). For Kurtz, Moore, in his open-

question argument, has conflated the two questions, making the question

unanswerable and invalid so then it is not open (Kurtz 1955